LYON, France — An American accused of sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania student in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that read: “So I raped you” has been arrested in France after a three-year search.
A prosecutor in Metz, France, confirmed Tuesday that Ian Thomas Cleary, 31, of Saratoga, California, was taken into custody last month and will be held pending extradition proceedings.
Cleary had been the subject of an international search since authorities in Pennsylvania issued a felony warrant in the case in 2021, weeks after an Associated Press story detailed local prosecutors’ reluctance to prosecute sex crimes on campus.
The arrest warrant accuses Cleary of stalking an 18-year-old Gettysburg College student at a party, sneaking into her dorm and sexually assaulting her while she texted friends for help. He was a 20-year-old student from Gettysburg at the time, but did not return to campus.
According to a French court official, Cleary was arrested on the street in Metz on April 24 as part of a police check. He told a magistrate that he had “arrived in France two or three years ago” from Albania and had only recently come to Metz, but that he had no accommodation there, the official said. A French lawyer appointed to represent him did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment on Tuesday.
Cleary had previously spent time in France and also has ties to California and Maryland, according to his online postings. His father is a technology executive in Silicon Valley, while his mother has lived in Baltimore. Neither he nor his parents returned repeated phone and email messages left by the AP, including calls to his parents on Tuesday.
Gettysburg prosecutor Shannon Keeler had a rape exam taken the same day she was attacked in 2013. She gathered witnesses and evidence and pushed officials for years to file charges. In 2021, she went to authorities again after discovering the Facebook messages that appeared to come from Cleary’s account.
“So I raped you,” the sender had written in a series of messages.
“I will never do it to anyone again.”
“I need to hear your voice.”
“I will pray for you.”
According to the June 2021 warrant, police verified that the Facebook account used to send the messages belonged to Ian Cleary. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett, who filed the case, did not immediately return a call Tuesday.
The AP generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault without their consent, which Keeler granted. Her attorney, reached Tuesday, had no immediate comment on Cleary’s detention.
After leaving Gettysburg, Cleary earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Santa Clara University, near his childhood home in California, worked for Tesla and then moved to France for several years, according to his website, which features his self-published medieval fiction describes.
Keeler, originally from Moorestown, New Jersey, stayed to graduate from Gettysburg and help lead the women’s lacrosse team to a national title.
In 2023, two years after the warrant was filed, Keeler and her attorneys wondered how he could avoid arrest in the age of digital tracking. The US Marshals Service believed he was likely overseas and en route, even though he was the subject of an Interpol alert, a so-called red alert.
Very few campus rapes are prosecuted in the U.S., both because victims are afraid to go to police and because prosecutors are reluctant to bring cases that are difficult to win, the AP investigation found.
When the order was issued, Keeler said she was grateful but knew it only happened “because I made my story public, which no survivor should have to do to get justice.”
___ Dale reported from Philadelphia.